Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead
General James Mattis, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired), and Bing West. New York: Random House, 2019. 320 pp. Appxs. Notes. Index. $28.
Reviewed by Lieutenant Colonel Dillon Fishman, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve
Rare is the general who is equally beloved by troops and respected by officers. Yet as an unabashed scrappy brawler and sage commander, General James Mattis inspires admiration and affection from both groups. The many monikers of Mattis—Warrior Monk, Mad Dog, and Chaos—attest to his unique persona and style. But in Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead, far from extolling mere bravado, Mattis’s thoughtful insights reveal the book’s twin themes of teamwork and trust.
From the outset, Mattis’s gravelly voice rolls off the pages. The book opens in the Pacific Northwest, with Mattis candidly describing his checkered early years, punctuated by bar fights and hitchhiking. But after he enters the Marine Corps on a waiver, stern noncommissioned officers (NCOs) quickly school him in the ways of the service. His respect for the mentorship of NCOs is evident. With his unique cadence and clip, and unmistakable quotations, Coach Mattis, too, stands over the reader urging nothing less than the pursuit of excellence.
The book’s three parts—Direct Leadership, Executive Leadership, and Strategic Leadership—each feature examples from Mattis’s 40-year career to illustrate leadership concepts. Ashore and afloat, in Iraq or under way in the Mediterranean, Mattis highlights the importance of building trust and advocates for leadership practices such as delegation of tactical command to the lowest capable level. Yet he warns leaders to pursue affection, not popularity, which seeks favoritism and may hinder the mission.
The book’s topics include staples of leadership—decentralization, mission-type orders, and adaptation. Yet perhaps equally important, Mattis’s principles and practices also highlight “command and feedback” over “command and control,” the leader’s responsibility to protect mavericks, and the criticality of history.
Unsurprisingly, the book is a treasure trove for timeless Mattis quotes. An unabashed scholar, on the subject of reading, Mattis writes: “If you haven’t read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate, and you will be incompetent because your personal experiences alone aren’t broad enough to sustain you. Any commander who claims he is ‘too busy to read’ is going to fill body bags with his troops as he learns the hard way.” The book will cement Mattis’s own place in the pantheon of military reading lists.
However, the message is layered beyond simple sound bites. Despite his obvious patriotism, for instance, Mattis pointedly rejects triumphalism—noting that Americans liberate rather than dominate. Rather than merely seeking to use its power of intimidation, urges Mattis, the United States must leverage its great power of inspiration. To that end, he notes that nothing transcends the example of the United States’ ability to make its own democracy work. This, then, is an important leadership message: The military exists to defend the American experiment. Perhaps most sobering is the book’s final thrust. What concerns Mattis most, as a seasoned military leader, is not America’s external adversaries but its internal divisiveness.
What emerges from the book is a nuanced discussion of leadership and democracy. Though Mattis pointedly declines to comment on politics, the book includes his resignation letter—a clear admonishment that nations with allies thrive, and those without them die.
In discussing the book in public, Mattis regularly invokes Abraham Lincoln’s 1858 observation that if America were to die, it would be from suicide. To avoid that fate, leaders must collaborate, build trust, and leverage alliances. This is a worthy read not just for Marines and sailors, but for all leaders, lovers of freedom, and champions of democracy.
■ Lieutenant Colonel Fishman, a Marine Corps judge advocate, is completing a Ph.D. in leadership studies. He deployed twice to Afghanistan and once on board the USS Tortuga (LSD-46).
The Warriors of Anbar
Ed Darack. Boston, MA: Da Capo Press, 2019. 256 pp. Sources. Index. Maps. $28.
Reviewed By Lieutenant Commander Jared Carlson, U.S. Navy
It’s been nearly 13 years since 2d Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment (2-3), returned from its 2006–7 Iraq deployment. Ed Darack’s book, The Warriors of Anbar, relays its stories in a raw and powerfully intimate way. Action leaps off the pages at a frantic pace, reminiscent of the Marines’ extreme speed of operation. The stories are compelling—told from the grunt’s perspective, the book presents a seldom seen personal view of the adversity and triumph of that struggle. It also provides an early and lasting example of success in the Iraq War.
The book begins as 2-3, fresh off a storied deployment to Afghanistan’s Hindu Kush region, completes its predeployment training and prepares to enter into the fight once more. The events that follow lead to one of the toughest, yet most successful, campaigns of the entire war.
Darack describes the pre-surge scene in the Haditha Triad region in the middle months of 2006 as “quiet” compared to that in more familiar cities such as Fallujah and Ramadi. As a result of the success of those campaigns, however, the battle-hardened and resilient fighters of Al Qaeda in Iraq withdrew farther to the west and moved deeper into Al Anbar province—toward Haditha. As 2-3 assumed responsibility for its mission, the battle suddenly pitched into a cacophony of violence. Al Qaeda, wounded but not defeated after Fallujah and Ramadi, lashed out against the residents of Haditha and the Marines of 2-3.
The Warriors of Anbar provides an unblinking look at the action, giving readers a sense of the intensity and violence of the fight. The Marines are tough, confident, and committed, and those characteristics shine through during both their successes and failures. In the book are firsthand accounts of the implementation of the then-newly revised counterinsurgency doctrine, jointly published by the U.S. Army and Marine Corps. As the Marines of 2-3 prepared and deployed, their understanding of and commitment to the doctrine’s tenets were put to the test. They found themselves performing the roles of warrior and diplomat, police officer and statesman, advisor and coach. Their adaptation to those roles and innovative approaches displayed flexibility and strength—traits necessary to win.
The book describes the action through the eyes of individuals at all levels within the battalion. We see Lieutenant Colonel James Donnellan and his unwavering support and trust in his team, leading the war from a mobile command post in the midst of the action. We are with Captain Tracy as he uses unorthodox methods to motivate his Marines, earns the trust and confidence of the locals, and puts Al Qaeda on its heels with a lightning pace of operations. We meet dozens of individual Marines—29 of whom paid the ultimate price.
Two-Three established a security built on shared beliefs with the local culture that led to peace. Al Qaeda in Iraq, and later ISIS, never again gained a foothold in the Haditha Triad, and the region has remained stable for more than a decade.
The book is short but gripping. Those looking for an approachable foray into the topic of the Iraq War or simply an action-packed, true-to-life account that reads like a novel will not be disappointed. More important, those looking for lessons on combat leadership, problem solving, and human relationships will find profound meaning in and behind the stories. The depths of this book go far beyond the retelling of history and cross into a philosophical and ethical realm that those in the profession of arms would be wise to explore.
■ Lieutenant Commander Carlson is a career surface warfare officer. He serves at Naval Personnel Command (PERS 41).
Dawn of the Code War: America’s Battle Against Russia, China, and the Rising Global Cyber Threat
John P. Carlin and Garrett M. Graff. New York: PublicAffairs, 2018. 464 pp. Notes. Index. $30.
Reviewed by Captain Ramberto Torruella, U.S. Navy (Retired)
When I was in high school in the early 1980s, a group of us used to take pleasure in cracking the write protection of our favorite video games. This wasn’t serious hacking. We used game-cracking software, from where I don’t remember. I know we didn’t see this as stealing, but we had a vague clue about intellectual property, so we knew it probably wasn’t right. I do know that we had no serious distribution scheme. We were just teenagers helping each other make clean copies of games we wanted to try before buying. This is what passed as mindless fun for the Dungeons & Dragons crowd back in 1984. Right up until the police showed up.
He was undercover; showed up as a student in my world studies class during the middle of the spring semester looking like he needed to shave twice a day. I suppose he could have been a teenager, but this was the age of 21 Jump Street on TV, so we were all suspicious. We weren’t really worried—he couldn’t have been after us. Then he started talking about sharing video games and using cracking software.
First, he looked way too cool to be a gamer. Next, we never talked about this at school. It just wasn’t cool enough. But what really gave him away was when he started handing out printed inventories of the games he was willing to share. None of us was that organized. None of us had the money to waste on printer paper.
When he approached me and asked about sharing, I just told him that copying video games was wrong, and that I wouldn’t do that. I don’t think anyone in our little clan of nerds shared anything with him. He went away two weeks later.
Dawn of the Code War recounts those heady days of the 80s, when computers were new and cool, and the law couldn’t stop budding hackers from doing what they wanted. John P. Carlin, the former national coordinator of the Department of Justice’s (DoJ’s) Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property Program, teamed with author and commentator Garrett M. Graff to write a book that is one part history of computers and hacking and two parts Law and Order: Computer Crimes Unit. They tell the story of hackers, why they exist, what motivates them to crack into computers, and how the U.S. legal system had to evolve to handle those who use computers to break the law or threaten the country.
Carlin was hired by DoJ through the attorney general’s Honor Program. He started working in tax fraud, but being younger than his colleagues by nearly a decade, he was the only one who grasped how the printers worked. So, when his section needed a lawyer who understood computers to prosecute a case, he was the natural choice. As a lawyer with a knack for technology, Carlin has an outstanding perspective and the ability to both explain the intricacies of computer crime and prosecution without getting too technical, and to understand how the U.S. government’s response to hacking has evolved. This is critical, for as nation-states and terrorists started using cyberspace as an asymmetric means to counter the influence of the United States, our government’s responses had to evolve as well. Deterrence had to take on a different character—a law enforcement character.
Carlin and Garret recount famous hacking schemes—from North Korea’s hack of Sony Pictures as revenge for The Interview to ISIS’s hack of the TJ Maxx customer database to find the emails of U.S. service members and issue threats online—and the struggle of the U.S. government to respond effectively. They write about how using law enforcement to indict known hackers, from both nation-states and terrorist organizations, removed the anonymity of the internet and forced perpetrators to feel consequences for their actions. They also detail how law enforcement and the Defense Department teamed up and shared information to allow kinetic attacks on the cyber recruitment capabilities of ISIS. Above all, the book is about how the legal system became more proficient at prosecuting cyber crime, and how those techniques gave the U.S. government the tools it needed to apply law enforcement power as a deterrent to adversary operations in cyberspace.
For readers in the cybersecurity profession, this book will offer nothing new other than some understanding of how DoJ evolved to fight cyber crime.
But for those less familiar with the topic, this book will be a revelation of just how unprepared the government and industry are for malicious activities in cyberspace. Equally revealing is how unprepared law enforcement was for cyber crime, and the huge effort it took for both industry and the government to develop the tools to deal with bad actors in cyberspace. We still have a long way to go, but at least we are a bit better than a cop pretending to be a teenager to catch a high school hacker.
■ Captain Torruella is the former director of communications and networks/chief information officer for commander, Naval Forces Europe, Africa, Sixth Fleet. He retired from the Navy in June 2019. He currently serves as both a national security strategy instructor and a cyberspace industry study instructor at the Eisenhower School, National Defense University.
Scapa 1919: The Archaeology of a Scuttled Fleet
Innes McCartney. Oxford, UK: Osprey/Bloomsbury, 2019. 336 pp. Illus. Maps. Appxs. Biblio. Index. $40.
Reviewed by James P. Delgado
The latest from archaeologist, historian, and accomplished diver Dr. Innes McCartney, Scapa 1919 examines the century-long “end” of the German High Seas Fleet, some of its ships veterans of Jutland, others veterans of other battles, and a powerful foe of Britain and its allies in the 1914–18 war.
With the Armistice, Germany surrendered the High Seas Fleet to the Royal Navy, and it was interned at Scapa Flow. In June 1919, when it became clear that the fleet would not survive as a naval force, but would be parceled out as war prizes, its crews conducted what could be considered the last naval act of World War I by scuttling their ships. Of 77 ships in Scapa Flow that day, 52 were sunk by their crews. What followed were decades of effort to raise, if not intact, then in pieces, as many of the 52 ships as could be done for scrap.
McCartney divides the book into four parts: 1. the scuttling event; 2. the subsequent salvage work by the firm of Cox & Danks from 1924 to 1939 and the archaeological signature of that salvage collectively and individually; 3. the surviving wrecks; and 4. the conclusions and cultural legacy of the scuttling in this centennial year. The appendices look at other wrecks in Scapa, as McCartney also examines the entire maritime landscape of this famous site, including HMS Vanguard and Royal Oak.
Those seeking a detailed history of the ships and scuttling are directed to earlier history books, and they would be worth consulting before diving into Scapa 1919. McCartney appropriately draws on, acknowledges, and directs readers to earlier works such as Dan van der Vat’s The Grand Scuttle. The bibliography is a focused, excellent list of archival, primary, and secondary sources. As with his earlier works, the author does his homework.
The power of McCartney’s work is the synthesis of history, data, and his archaeologist’s eye. The various sites are examined, and the author includes what was known in 1919, and what was done between 1924 and 1939, as well as the changes wrought by time, and what the archaeology means individually and collectively. The book is excellently illustrated in color with maps, sonar-mapped depictions of the wrecks, and extensive images of the ships afloat as well as their remains underwater. Beautifully presented and library-quality bound with thick stock, it has been printed to last.
This approach to the archaeology of navies is a leading edge in the evolving study of war, war at sea, and the nature of archaeology. It adds to what decades ago was more the documentation of iconic ships, or forensic analysis, which is an ideal and necessary synthesis of the expertise of naval architects and archaeologists.
The “big picture” is emerging thanks to the work of scholars such as McCartney, just as technology and access to support are enabling the discovery of many lost warships in the deepest parts of the ocean. What is particularly important as well is that in tackling the issue of the Grand Scuttle, archaeology looks at another important aspect of human nature through an act of incredible bravery and defiance in the face of defeat and surrender. I highly recommend this book.
■ Dr. Delgado is a maritime archaeologist, historian, and explorer whose work has covered many significant naval vessels and battles. A contributor to Naval History and Proceedings, he is the author, coauthor, or editor of more than 30 books, most recently War at Sea: A Shipwrecked History from Antiquity to the Twentieth Century (Oxford University press, 2019).
New & Noteworthy
By Lieutenant Brendan Cordial, U.S. Navy
Innovating in a Secret World: The Future of National Security and Global Leadership
Tina P. Srivastava. Lincoln, NE: Potomac Books, 2019. 186 pp. Photos. Illus. Tables. Notes. Biblio. Index. $44.95.
A startling critique of the long-term viability of the current regulatory regime surrounding U.S. government secure research and development, Tina Srivastava’s Innovating in a Secret World should be a clarion call for change. The book’s persuasive argument is concisely made and comprehensively supported by recent examples of innovation being hampered by competing organizations, policies, and regulations, all ostensibly devoted to enhancing U.S. national security.
The author posits that four endemic constraints exist within the current regime: pace and difficulty of maneuvering the bureaucracy, favoring of established players, the secrecy challenge, and the participation challenge. Each constraint is the consequence of well-intentioned people and organizations working to improve our national security, but together they create an environment inherently in tension with the vital open innovation regime that continues to mark the rapid evolution of the commercial sector.
Betrayal in Berlin: The True Story of the Cold War’s Most Audacious Espionage Operation
Steve Vogel. 525 pp. New York: Custom House, 2019. Photos. Maps. Notes. Index. $29.99.
A page-turner that seems too incredible to be based on actual events, this book details the combined British/American feat of tunneling underneath the border of East Berlin to tap critical Soviet communications. At the time, Western forces felt they would not have reliable intelligence concerning Soviet intentions to launch a nuclear attack—a position that could leave them hopelessly unable to preempt or potentially even retaliate should the expected doomsday scenario occur. Pulitzer Prize–winning author Steve Vogel writes a compelling story of the successful effort to plan and build the tunnel, and once discovered, to stymie Soviet propaganda campaigns against Western intelligence services operating this critical communications intelligence center during the early Cold War.
The strongest aspect of the book is its ability to develop the varied cast of characters surrounding the Berlin tunnel incident. Within its pages are tales of high-level traitors, unwitting accomplices, ideological believers, concerned family members, and self-destructive genius. Anyone interested in the world of great power espionage, or frankly anyone who enjoys a good thriller, should love this book.
In the Cauldron: Terror, Tension, and the American Ambassador’s Struggle to Avoid Pearl Harbor
Lew Paper. Washington, DC: Regnery, 2019. 417 pp. Notes. Biblio. $29.99.
An examination of the U.S. and Imperial Japanese diplomatic relationship in the years preceding Pearl Harbor, this book provides a fresh and underappreciated perspective on the politics and personalities of the principal actors on both sides of the impending conflict. Written primarily from U.S. Ambassador Joseph Grew’s point of view, the book makes a compelling case that, at least for a time, war in the Pacific may have been avoidable through more effective diplomatic discussions.
The product of exhaustive research, the book effectively weaves passages from personal diaries and official documents to provide an intelligible and nuanced narrative. Recommended reading for anyone interested in developing a more comprehensive understanding of the complex series of events leading to 7 December 1941.
Painting War: George Plante’s Combat Art in World War II
Kathleen Broome Williams. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2019. 278 pp. Notes. Biblio. Index. $29.95.
An enjoyable tale of a little-known Scottish merchant mariner turned Allied propagandist, painter George Plante’s World War II journey enhances the historical record and provides insight into this critical aspect of effective warmaking. While perhaps less glorious than a ship’s heroics in action or a soldier’s efforts in the height of battle, in many ways the stroke of Plante’s paintbrush helped defeat Axis forces just as effectively as any conventional munition.
Through Plante’s personal papers and memoirs, the book describes the justification and reasoning behind the types of paintings Allied propagandists used at various points through the conflict and their positive impact on the overall war effort. Approachable even to novices like me, the book and Plante’s story can benefit readers at all levels of art appreciation.
■ Lieutenant Cordial is a surface warfare officer serving in his first department head tour on board an Arleigh Burke–class destroyer.